In recent weeks, Guangdong cities such as Foshan and Maoming have been grappling with an outbreak of chikungunya fever. As of August 16, the province has reported nearly ten thousand confirmed cases. While most patients have mild symptoms and no severe or fatal cases have been officially reported, local governments have once again implemented “extreme epidemic prevention” measures that have sparked comparisons to the stringent zero-COVID tactics seen during the early days of the pandemic.
The chikungunya fever outbreak first emerged in Guangdong following a community transmission case in Shunde District of Foshan on July 8, leading to its spread to multiple cities in the region. According to official reports, the province recorded 830 new cases within a week from August 10 to 16. By August 16, the cumulative number of cases reached 9,933, with 644 cases in Foshan, 85 in Guangzhou, 22 in Zhanjiang, and 16 each in Shenzhen and Huizhou, while other cities reported cases mostly in single digits.
Despite the scale of cases, the local containment measures have far exceeded what science would dictate, leading to what some term as “secondary disasters.” In Foshan, photos of villagers’ vegetable plots being bulldozed and covered with cement have sparked outrage. Wechat users have questioned, “Can’t we even grow our own vegetables for self-sufficiency? Using cement to prevent mosquitoes, this absurdity has reached its peak.”
Meanwhile, Maoming witnessed the peculiar sight of “village-wide weeding.” Upon discovery of the first chikungunya fever case, the local government ordered villagers to collectively clear out weeds in fields and mandated mass blood testing. A shopkeeper surnamed Chen from the Guandu Street in Maoming shared with a reporter, “Recently, mosquito repellent has been sprayed everywhere in our area, the smell is overpowering, even cooking at home is impossible, forcing us to eat out. With over a hundred households in our community, everyone now eats out, all the flowers and plants have been cleared out, even food delivery services have stopped coming, saying this place resembles an epidemic area.”
Heavy rainfall in Foshan’s Chancheng district led to severe flooding, with the root cause traced back to the “mosquito-repellent screens.” Mr. Xu, a car repair shop worker in Chancheng, lamented, “The rain was so heavy recently, the water outside my repair shop was a meter deep, a woman’s car was submerged, and she sat outside crying. They (the government) put mosquito screens on the drains, but when the heavy rain came, the water couldn’t drain, flooding all the shops and garages, many cars were totaled.” He criticized officials for their incompetence, stating, “They are more likely to create problems than to solve them.”
Online users have resorted to sarcasm and mockery, calling these measures “ideas brainstormed by preschoolers.” Comments questioning the actions have been swiftly deleted from platforms like Weibo and Douyin, but public dissent continues unabated.
A retired resident named Jiang Zhimin in Shenzhen’s Nanshan district mentioned seeing spray teams going through the streets, describing it as mere “perfunctory.” He added, “I’ve seen plenty of videos online of disinfection and mosquito-killing efforts, reminiscent of the mass nucleic acid tests during the early COVID days. There are people spraying around the bus stop near my gate every morning and evening, seems unnecessary to me, with only a few infections among Shenzhen’s over twenty million population. These officials are just putting on a show for their superiors. The other day, someone from the community asked me to buy a mosquito net, but they’re hard to find now.”
Sections of Guangxi such as Guigang, Guilin, Nanning, and Hezhou have also witnessed extensive spraying and clearing of vegetable gardens. Residents captured images of spraying vehicles traversing the streets repeatedly and workers uprooting crops from private plots. A netizen on a platform X quipped, “Back then everyone caught sparrows and produced steel, now it’s time for everyone to eliminate mosquitoes.”
Mr. Wu, a public health scholar at a university in Beijing, criticized the local interventions, stating, “The core of scientific containment lies in removing stagnant water, improving drainage systems, and reducing mosquito breeding grounds, not in promoting mass weeding and attaching screens. These so-called experts at the local level are full of bad ideas; the way they operate, I could predict even with my eyes closed. The other day, someone from Guangdong called me mentioning Zhong Nanshan joining the epidemic prevention efforts – it’s merely a formality.”
The second-level control areas have expanded to over a dozen provinces and cities like Shanghai, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Sichuan, and Guizhou. Wu cautioned that continuing with the “iron-fisted control” methods akin to those during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic would not only fail to contain the outbreak but could also exacerbate societal discontent, potentially leading to significant protests.
Numerous citizens have likened the current epidemic prevention measures to a replica of the “zero-COVID” approach during the earlier pandemic days. Some netizens sarcastically remarked, “While everyone took nucleic acid tests during the COVID era, now it’s time for everyone to wipe out mosquitoes; when neighborhoods were sealed off back then, now it’s the vegetable gardens. These officials always find ways to trouble the common people.”
Critics have argued that the true threats to public health stem not from mild epidemic cases but from secondary disasters created by the bureaucratic system, highlighting issues like contaminated milk products and toxic food as more significant harms to the populace. They point out that treating “small-eyed insects” or mosquitoes as enemies signifies a lack of confidence among authorities.
Overseas commentators have observed that the Chinese Communist Party tends to rely on political mobilization rather than scientific methods when handling public crises, where “control” appears more as a spectacle. A resident in Australia, using the alias Sun Tao, expressed, “I feel they are not aiming to genuinely prevent the epidemic but to showcase how busy the government seems, appearing responsible. This tense atmosphere is deliberately created to divert attention from economic and social problems. Chikungunya fever, a disease that could have been controlled, has been turned into a mass mobilization, showcasing the absurdity of the system.”